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Swiss vs. UK approach to major tranport projects

158 points by jbyers 1y ago

anon191928 1y ago
[flagged]
gadders 1y ago
I think the Lower Thames Crossing will make HS2 look like a model of efficiency by the time it is completed. £1.2bn spent without even a shovel of dirt being removed. [1] Instead they have spent money on shite like this [2] (which may be admirable in themselves, but bribes to shut local communities and charities up shouldn't be part of the project). [1] https://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/1-2bn-spent-on-lower-thames-crossing-before-construction-st-321148/ https://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/1-2bn-spent-on-l... [2] https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/lower-thames-crossing/community-hub/investing-in-communities/ https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/lower-thames-crossi...
- IshKebab 1y ago
  I'm way more ok with worthy bribes than I am with nonsense like the £100m bat tunnel. But yeah it's still pretty ridiculous.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Compensating local communities for the impact of national infrastructure is a simple approach. Wouldn't surprise me if longer term that would lead to no-win-no-fee consultants trying to extract more money from the process thus breaking it. Otherwise it's 1) Don't build national infrastructure 2) Ignore local opposition
- iLoveOncall 1y ago
  > Instead they have spent money on shite like this [2] Half a million at most out of 1.2 billion. > To date, 55 projects have been awarded grants of up to £10,000
  - gadders 1y ago
    Honestly, it's as much the waste of time as the money.
- 7952 1y ago
  The bribes are looking much worse for overhead lines. Just giving people money (off their bill) for doing no work and making no real sacrifice. People will either be insulted by the low amount or insulted at the bribe. It will change no minds. Running community benefit projects as mitigation for other harms does make some sense when the cost of an engineering solution is much higher.
- ChocolateGod 1y ago
  Nimbyism needs to be shut down at the earliest opportunity when a project is mandatory for the economic growth of the country, people moan about their energy prices but also moan when a wind turbine is within viewing distance of their house. I have seen the current Labour government start to override councils putting up fusses, too early to see if it makes any meaningful effect though. I watched this video from TLDR last year and found it easy to understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPFlDGQah4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPFlDGQah4
  - I-M-S 1y ago
    Absolutely. Asocial behaviour in the West comes at far too low of a price. For example, here's how NIMBYs are dealt with in places like Serbia: https://n1info.rs/vesti/porodici-iz-kragujevca-investitor-zazidao-prozore-jer-nisu-pristali-na-njegovu-ponudu/ https://n1info.rs/vesti/porodici-iz-kragujevca-investitor-za... If you're gonna be anti-progress, fine, but it should cost you, not others
    - ChocolateGod 1y ago
      I personally love the look of wind turbines so am happy for them to be visible from my back yard.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
dhfbshfbu4u3 1y ago
The Swiss method works because their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high. They have a smaller geographic footprint and heavier services economy. The UK still has so much industrial traffic (inclusive of agriculture) and a far less cohesive political environment. This isn’t to say that HS2 isn’t a train wreck (haha - it is) but applying small country policies to big country problems is a a bit simplistic.
- avh02 1y ago
  > They have a smaller geographic footprint you seem to forget their famous mountains
  - dhfbshfbu4u3 1y ago
    I lived there. The number of trains that go over the top of the mountains is basically zero.
    - avh02 1y ago
      Exactly
- mrks_hy 1y ago
  Did you read the article and can point out which part of the specific method would not work in the UK? There is nothing in the outlined strategy that would be made unworkable. You may reach a different value-engineered point, and it explicitly mentions cargo trains as well.
  - bootsmann 1y ago
    The long term commitment by the government works for Switzerland because the government is a permanent national unity coalition that has not changed in party composition for over 50 years. The fact that the people in power when things are planned will be the same that reap the rewards 4 elections later helps align politics for long term issues.
thebruce87m 1y ago
> Swiss vs. UK approach to major _tranport_ projects The ‘s’ in tranport stands for security.
jeffrallen 1y ago
This is an excellent analysis of how to avoid the curse of megaprojects. Heres a couple reactions based on the Swiss point of view. > keeps the supply chain warm Yes! And the human resources pool. And a constant supply of construction projects means every industry touched by them can keep a pipeline of apprentices in training. And lots of small projects means there are places where the risk is not so big of taking a chance on some innovation, or a university research collaboration, further keeping the pipeline full of students and innovations. But, for it to work, you probably also need a high trust society. You need light touch regulation on the training, research funding, and project management. And all of that is easier at the 9 million person scale than at the 60 million person scale.
- dgb23 1y ago
  The scale is certainly a challenging factor. But in terms of trust: I think that's earned over time. Swiss people believe in decentralization of power, direct democracy and steady improvement, because it has proven to be stable. Inherently the Swiss are rather distrustful and cautious.
pu_pe 1y ago
This is a big reason why most modern Western large-scale infrastructure projects get delayed and cost overruns. People making decisions treat construction as if it was cloud computing: just pay for how much you need, when you need it. Some sectors are highly specialized and if their future use is not predictable, they must charge a high premium for that uncertainty.
- graemep 1y ago
  Basically they are acting like the sort of third world country that does grandiose vanity projects. Having lived in one that went through a phase of that (Sri Lanka) it strikes me that this is yet another way in which the UK is becoming more like Sri Lanka (all bad ways - not the things that are good about the latter). I see it in education too, for example.
cs02rm0 1y ago
I think this sounds a little like it's viewed through a lens of survivor bias. If the UK had made a success of HS2 (difficult to imagine with governments in much of living memory, but let's sidestep all of that) then it could have been claimed, perhaps with some merit, that the UK was able to do something with rail infrastructure that the Swiss could never because they were hamstrung by their approach.
- evidencetamper 1y ago
  If the failure was not a failure, but instead an amazing success, then it would have been more successful than this exceptional success.
- palijer 1y ago
  This topic is naturally viewed through a survivorship lens, but I don't think it is a bias in this situation. If the facts of the situation were reversed, of course we would draw the reverses conclusion. That golds true for just about any argument.
- kypro 1y ago
  You might have a point if it wasn't for the fact that infrastructure projects in the UK generally cost more than our European peers. The UK's inability to build is apparent everywhere – our extreme lack of house building, our lack of modern nuclear power stations, our sewage system operating beyond its capacity, poor national transportation, etc. If HS2 was an exception to the rule then I doubt there would be this much focus on it. HS2 is just the most costly and extreme example of the problems we face when it comes to major infrastructure projects.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  It’s not really survivor bias if the article is about why projects fail. Then it’s just an “example”.
Neil44 1y ago
For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue. Scale that kind of thinking up over the whole project including people who don't want HS2 at all using every legal angle imaginable to frustrate it and there's your £66Bn. There are no adults in the room saying you know what, the value to life and society and the good that could be done with £100M of public money is worth more than the unproven possibility of a bat being injured. One of the good things and assets of this country is our strong legal system and the comparative accessibility of justice, compared to many other places in the world. But this also gets used by people with an axe to grind to frustrate big public projects.
- 7952 1y ago
  I think bats can be particularly vulnerable to new development due to their commuting habits and slow rate of reproduction. Although, the engineering solution here does seem crazy. I am far more angry about the unnecessary tunnelling for dubious landscape reasons. The Chilterns is nice, but spending such vast amounts is unjustified. Better to spend a smaller amount of money improving the actual environment rather than peoples perception of it.
- consp 1y ago
  From my abroad ivory tower it just looked like the torries were trying to extract as much money for their friends as possible and got away with it too. But that's just my personal, likely biased, observation.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    If you have little information, it's a decent rule of thumb.
- throw0101a 1y ago
  > For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says […] That someone is Natural England, who is tasked, by law, with enforcing laws that protect wildlife and the environment and needs to sign off on disruptive work: > A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said "multiple options" had been considered, including green bridges and restoring habitats, to "comply with laws protecting vulnerable species". > It said through "extensive engagement" with Natural England, "a covered structure was designed". * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo If you don't like it change the law so that the environment/wildlife isn't protected, or these kinds of sign offs are not requirement, or can be overrided in the enacting legislation of infrastructure projects.
CraigJPerry 1y ago
UK energy supply projects could do with that Swiss approach.
- Emma_Goldman 1y ago
  Why isn't that the current CfD / RAB models?
  - CraigJPerry 1y ago
    I don't think so. The energy market CFD concept strikes me as just another example of the over-financialisation of almost everything. Like the kind of solution you get from 2A gun aficionados when a particularly horrible event crops up (the answer is always more guns). In this case, more financialisation.
zengineer 1y ago
I live in Switzerland since 10 years and I am always - not only amazed to read about how the Swiss gov / people tackle things, but experience it first hand in my daily life. Above all the train system is very interesting. From the smooth timetables to even the smallest details (E.g the acronyms sound or music notes in trains is based on the railway abbreviations SBB / CFF / FFE). I even made a post about it when creating a "Swiss train world": https://medium.com/@franzeus/building-an-interactive-coloring-world-with-swiss-trains-and-my-4-year-old-nephew-67d6e45381d7 https://medium.com/@franzeus/building-an-interactive-colorin...
- sschueller 1y ago
  Also all the data is open: https://opentransportdata.swiss/ https://opentransportdata.swiss/ and is continually being expanded with more data. So you can build things like I did: https://www.stationdisplay.com/ https://www.stationdisplay.com/ Recently also all the Swiss Weather data has been opened and you can create anything you want with it (no commercial restrictions)
zabzonk 1y ago
But of course the British did create one of the greatest transport projects - the country-wide railway system, only to have it destroyed by the Conservatives. I used to live in North London, and it made me so sad that each branch-line I walked over on bridge, now allotments, or simply overgrown, could have taken me int the City far faster and more efficiently than the tube (I like the tube, as much as anyone can). The UK can build things, but not if politicians are directly in charge, as they were in the Beeching cuts.
- ta1243 1y ago
  The majority of railway miles closed under Labour And your branch line wouldn't take you into the city - there isn't the terminal capacity. However new lines, like the Victoria, Jubilee, and Crossrail will.
moomin 1y ago
IIRC the principal cost overrun was a huge push to put nearly everything in tunnels in safe conservative consistencies. No project, good or bad, can survive that level of political interference.
- raverbashing 1y ago
  Yea NIMBYs (including "what about nature" or "what about bats" and "what about the scenery) are a huge waste of money and oxygen
linuxftw 1y ago
> Well, first up, they'd have spotted that our major cities need more frequent and faster rail connections from suburbs to centres and that these are prevented at the moment by insufficient platform capacity in stations like Leeds, Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street. So we need more station capacity in our city centres. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Build new cities, don't keep shuffling people into the existing ones. When you keep building new infrastructure to shuffle people into the same cities, the property values at the tail end of the infrastructure rise, pushing people further out, increasing the demand for new infrastructure. The property prices inside the city stay inflated, wages stagnate, the working class loses.
- decimalenough 1y ago
  The UK does not need more cities. In fact, like most of the industrialized world, their second-tier and third-tier cities are suffering since the entire economy and population are both getting inexorably pulled into London. This includes the planned cities ("new towns") that tried and largely failed to do exactly what you suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_in_the_United_Kingdo...
  - linuxftw 1y ago
    It's an easy problem to solve if you want to use government levers: Raise the minimum wage inside London. Keep raising it until businesses start moving to other cities.
    - Etheryte 1y ago
      This is a considerably worse solution with unknown knock-on effects, especially when compared to a well understood solution of making a few stations handle more capacity.
      - linuxftw 1y ago
        It's always just a few stations. Driving up the property values of the landlords in the cities. It's a never ending cycle.
yanis_t 1y ago
Somehow following the rabbit hole led me to this list of infra megaprojects around the world [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
  > "megaprojects, which may be defined as projects that cost more than US$1 billion" At our current pace a public toilet will soon qualify as a megaproject.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    In Europe, a defense megaproject.
inglor_cz 1y ago
I wonder how much of this difference is attributable to Swiss direct democracy, which teaches people to participate in the decision-making process, but it also teaches them that losing in a vote is natural, and that you in fact should have at least some position towards bigger projects, instead of ignoring 99 per cent of what is going on, because your position actually matters when the ballot is being counted. NIMBYs and other special interest groups are usually non-majority, but used to getting their way over the wish (or, more often, tired indifference) of the majority, which the Swiss system makes a bit harder.
- dgb23 1y ago
  There's some truth in what you say, but unfortunately there are also NIMBY regulations in place that delay/prevent infrastructure projects. I would prefer if our direct votes would shield _better_ against those mechanisms. However, I think the bigger cultural norm at play here is that public infrastructure is very cherished. We publicly own (at least 51% of each of) our energy companies, public transport system, telecommunications system etc. Long term planning and investment is also ingrained into our culture.
ajd555 1y ago
Great read, I didn't know about the Swiss approach to infrastructure projects, but I like it. In a sense, it's how successful networks are built: slowly, but steadily. I'm reminded of the Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen, where he states that starting at a smaller scale, you'll get a small network with more engagement that you can sustainably grow over time, whereas large companies that roll out a networked project in a big bang (Google+, anyone?) can dramatically fail. Very insightful and I look forward to applying this in NYC logistics!
ipaddr 1y ago
"They pick a year in the future - 2045, say - and ask: what should the national train timetable look like then, if we want to meet our national objectives as a country" The agile way. You end up getting nothing you really wanted done but everything is on time vs the method where you get everything you want at some unknown point in time. What if it was done waterfall style where you put in as much in the time frame and released at random marketing moments.
andsoitis 1y ago
> They pick a year in the future - 2045, say - and ask: what should the national train timetable look like then, if we want to meet our national objectives as a country? They work out what a good timetable looks like in that future. Then they build backwards from there. A workback plan!
Stevvo 1y ago
Switzerland's public transport is nearly perfect; it can take you anywhere, fast, in some of the most hostile inhabited terrain on the planet. However, a lot of people still drive because for many journies it's cheaper. I don't know if the UK can afford such great infrastructure investment.
- tonfa 1y ago
  > Switzerland's public transport is nearly perfect; it can take you anywhere, fast While I love swiss public transport, I wouldn't qualify it as fast. It's dense/frequent/reliable, but not so fast. If the core lines (e.g. St Gallen-Geneva and Basel-Lugano) where running >200km/h that would be fast. One reason is that making those fast has a much bigger benefit for cross border travel (non swiss), while a lot of the investments are done to benefit e.g. commuters, but with the enshrined road Gotthard traffic limitation I think we'll need to make Alp crossing more attractive for cross border travels at some point (and hopefully do the same for the mittelland line, zurich to geneva in sub-2h should definitely be possible)
steve1977 1y ago
Being Swiss, there's a lot of things I think we could do better. Public transport is not one of them though, I really have to say we got this nailed down pretty well. Even when it doesn't work, it still often works better than in neighboring countries ;)
- sschueller 1y ago
  There is always room for improvement. If you don't stay on top of things you end up with what Germany has now for public transport infrastructure.
- jeffrallen 1y ago
  Or like in Vaud and Geneva, if it doesn't work it's because we love it to death, completely overwhelming the limited capacity available with hordes of rush-hour commuters.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  But we must admit that Switzerland does not actually have high speed rail at all. So asking how it would build High Speed 2 is a bit of a misleading question. Swiss rail runs on time but slowly, this suits the Swiss culture which is much less centralized around big megacities than the UK so there's less need to do long commutes at high speed. The article does agree that Switzerland wouldn't have built HS2 to begin with, and the point about continuous development over occasional megaprojects is a good one. But it goes off the rails when it starts saying like "They'd have identified core intercity links that are far too slow: typically not to/from London, but some of the second-tier city connections that are extraordinarily slow:" The UK doesn't need these things. What it needs is much more capacity in and out of the center of London. That's where people actually need to go and go fast. The author seems to think that British transport planners are inexplicably stupid but the depressing reality of British transport is that it's dominated by the problem of moving people in and out of the center of London at peak times. Economically nothing else generates a return on investment and there's nothing the planners can do about that. Swiss planners would reach the same conclusion. Given that there's already a lot of physical rail going in and out, and there's no good way to add more or expand stations due to the insanely high value of the land around them, that means increasing speeds on existing lines or massive tunnelling projects. Hence, Crossrail and High Speed Rail 2. Switzerland has a unique solution to this problem of people wanting to work in city centers. It just ignores it! Zurich is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, and sometimes literally the most expensive, whilst also having a big living space problem. It got that way because the Swiss refuse to do any of the following: - Increase urban density. - Make trains fast. - Build more parking. - Allow a free housing market so workers can move in. (Zurich is run by socialists who buy up tons of housing to stop "rich" people from renting it, which then makes what little remains even more expensive for everyone else). This strategy kills the cities and makes life worse for the people who actually generate the economic value, who find their high salaries barely stretch to even a student-sized apartment and for whom an 11km commute takes 30 minutes.
octo888 1y ago
> They pick a year in the future - 2045, say - and ask: what should the national train timetable look like then, if we want to meet our national objectives as a country? I love this. In the UK we're currently in the middle of a ~25-30 year rail upgrade programme and if you ask what the new timetables will look like (i.e. tangible benefits), they look at you as if you had 3 heads. They're too busy blowing their own trumpet any time they complete a minor piece of work to answer such nonsense questions.
carlcoryell 1y ago
The difference in this article rhymes strongly with the difference between project and product mindsets in software development.
fmajid 1y ago
Switzerland is a very rich country. But UK infrastructure construction is significantly more expensive than its European peers like France, which is just as budget-constrained as the UK is.

158 points by jbyers 1y ago

anon191928 1y ago

[flagged]

I think the Lower Thames Crossing will make HS2 look like a model of efficiency by the time it is completed. £1.2bn spent without even a shovel of dirt being removed. [1] Instead they have spent money on shite like this [2] (which may be admirable in themselves, but bribes to shut local communities and charities up shouldn't be part of the project). [1] https://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/1-2bn-spent-on-lower-thames-crossing-before-construction-st-321148/ https://www.kentonline.co.uk/gravesend/news/1-2bn-spent-on-l... [2] https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/lower-thames-crossing/community-hub/investing-in-communities/ https://nationalhighways.co.uk/our-roads/lower-thames-crossi...

IshKebab 1y ago
I'm way more ok with worthy bribes than I am with nonsense like the £100m bat tunnel. But yeah it's still pretty ridiculous.
- ta1243 1y ago
  Compensating local communities for the impact of national infrastructure is a simple approach. Wouldn't surprise me if longer term that would lead to no-win-no-fee consultants trying to extract more money from the process thus breaking it. Otherwise it's 1) Don't build national infrastructure 2) Ignore local opposition
iLoveOncall 1y ago
> Instead they have spent money on shite like this [2] Half a million at most out of 1.2 billion. > To date, 55 projects have been awarded grants of up to £10,000
- gadders 1y ago
  Honestly, it's as much the waste of time as the money.
7952 1y ago
The bribes are looking much worse for overhead lines. Just giving people money (off their bill) for doing no work and making no real sacrifice. People will either be insulted by the low amount or insulted at the bribe. It will change no minds. Running community benefit projects as mitigation for other harms does make some sense when the cost of an engineering solution is much higher.
ChocolateGod 1y ago
Nimbyism needs to be shut down at the earliest opportunity when a project is mandatory for the economic growth of the country, people moan about their energy prices but also moan when a wind turbine is within viewing distance of their house. I have seen the current Labour government start to override councils putting up fusses, too early to see if it makes any meaningful effect though. I watched this video from TLDR last year and found it easy to understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPFlDGQah4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYPFlDGQah4
- I-M-S 1y ago
  Absolutely. Asocial behaviour in the West comes at far too low of a price. For example, here's how NIMBYs are dealt with in places like Serbia: https://n1info.rs/vesti/porodici-iz-kragujevca-investitor-zazidao-prozore-jer-nisu-pristali-na-njegovu-ponudu/ https://n1info.rs/vesti/porodici-iz-kragujevca-investitor-za... If you're gonna be anti-progress, fine, but it should cost you, not others
  - ChocolateGod 1y ago
    I personally love the look of wind turbines so am happy for them to be visible from my back yard.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

dhfbshfbu4u3 1y ago

The Swiss method works because their population is 6X smaller and GDP per capita is twice as high. They have a smaller geographic footprint and heavier services economy. The UK still has so much industrial traffic (inclusive of agriculture) and a far less cohesive political environment. This isn’t to say that HS2 isn’t a train wreck (haha - it is) but applying small country policies to big country problems is a a bit simplistic.

avh02 1y ago
> They have a smaller geographic footprint you seem to forget their famous mountains
- dhfbshfbu4u3 1y ago
  I lived there. The number of trains that go over the top of the mountains is basically zero.
  - avh02 1y ago
    Exactly
mrks_hy 1y ago
Did you read the article and can point out which part of the specific method would not work in the UK? There is nothing in the outlined strategy that would be made unworkable. You may reach a different value-engineered point, and it explicitly mentions cargo trains as well.
- bootsmann 1y ago
  The long term commitment by the government works for Switzerland because the government is a permanent national unity coalition that has not changed in party composition for over 50 years. The fact that the people in power when things are planned will be the same that reap the rewards 4 elections later helps align politics for long term issues.

thebruce87m 1y ago

> Swiss vs. UK approach to major _tranport_ projects The ‘s’ in tranport stands for security.

jeffrallen 1y ago

This is an excellent analysis of how to avoid the curse of megaprojects. Heres a couple reactions based on the Swiss point of view. > keeps the supply chain warm Yes! And the human resources pool. And a constant supply of construction projects means every industry touched by them can keep a pipeline of apprentices in training. And lots of small projects means there are places where the risk is not so big of taking a chance on some innovation, or a university research collaboration, further keeping the pipeline full of students and innovations. But, for it to work, you probably also need a high trust society. You need light touch regulation on the training, research funding, and project management. And all of that is easier at the 9 million person scale than at the 60 million person scale.

dgb23 1y ago
The scale is certainly a challenging factor. But in terms of trust: I think that's earned over time. Swiss people believe in decentralization of power, direct democracy and steady improvement, because it has proven to be stable. Inherently the Swiss are rather distrustful and cautious.

pu_pe 1y ago

This is a big reason why most modern Western large-scale infrastructure projects get delayed and cost overruns. People making decisions treat construction as if it was cloud computing: just pay for how much you need, when you need it. Some sectors are highly specialized and if their future use is not predictable, they must charge a high premium for that uncertainty.

graemep 1y ago
Basically they are acting like the sort of third world country that does grandiose vanity projects. Having lived in one that went through a phase of that (Sri Lanka) it strikes me that this is yet another way in which the UK is becoming more like Sri Lanka (all bad ways - not the things that are good about the latter). I see it in education too, for example.

cs02rm0 1y ago

I think this sounds a little like it's viewed through a lens of survivor bias. If the UK had made a success of HS2 (difficult to imagine with governments in much of living memory, but let's sidestep all of that) then it could have been claimed, perhaps with some merit, that the UK was able to do something with rail infrastructure that the Swiss could never because they were hamstrung by their approach.

evidencetamper 1y ago
If the failure was not a failure, but instead an amazing success, then it would have been more successful than this exceptional success.
palijer 1y ago
This topic is naturally viewed through a survivorship lens, but I don't think it is a bias in this situation. If the facts of the situation were reversed, of course we would draw the reverses conclusion. That golds true for just about any argument.
kypro 1y ago
You might have a point if it wasn't for the fact that infrastructure projects in the UK generally cost more than our European peers. The UK's inability to build is apparent everywhere – our extreme lack of house building, our lack of modern nuclear power stations, our sewage system operating beyond its capacity, poor national transportation, etc. If HS2 was an exception to the rule then I doubt there would be this much focus on it. HS2 is just the most costly and extreme example of the problems we face when it comes to major infrastructure projects.
hnlmorg 1y ago
It’s not really survivor bias if the article is about why projects fail. Then it’s just an “example”.

Neil44 1y ago

For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says the nice bats in those nearby woods might not get on with the big scary trains so £100M gets spent to resolve the issue. Scale that kind of thinking up over the whole project including people who don't want HS2 at all using every legal angle imaginable to frustrate it and there's your £66Bn. There are no adults in the room saying you know what, the value to life and society and the good that could be done with £100M of public money is worth more than the unproven possibility of a bat being injured. One of the good things and assets of this country is our strong legal system and the comparative accessibility of justice, compared to many other places in the world. But this also gets used by people with an axe to grind to frustrate big public projects.

7952 1y ago
I think bats can be particularly vulnerable to new development due to their commuting habits and slow rate of reproduction. Although, the engineering solution here does seem crazy. I am far more angry about the unnecessary tunnelling for dubious landscape reasons. The Chilterns is nice, but spending such vast amounts is unjustified. Better to spend a smaller amount of money improving the actual environment rather than peoples perception of it.
consp 1y ago
From my abroad ivory tower it just looked like the torries were trying to extract as much money for their friends as possible and got away with it too. But that's just my personal, likely biased, observation.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  If you have little information, it's a decent rule of thumb.
throw0101a 1y ago
> For me it's summed up by the £100M tunnel to protect bats. Someone says […] That someone is Natural England, who is tasked, by law, with enforcing laws that protect wildlife and the environment and needs to sign off on disruptive work: > A spokesperson for HS2 Ltd said "multiple options" had been considered, including green bridges and restoring habitats, to "comply with laws protecting vulnerable species". > It said through "extensive engagement" with Natural England, "a covered structure was designed". * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo If you don't like it change the law so that the environment/wildlife isn't protected, or these kinds of sign offs are not requirement, or can be overrided in the enacting legislation of infrastructure projects.

CraigJPerry 1y ago

UK energy supply projects could do with that Swiss approach.

Emma_Goldman 1y ago
Why isn't that the current CfD / RAB models?
- CraigJPerry 1y ago
  I don't think so. The energy market CFD concept strikes me as just another example of the over-financialisation of almost everything. Like the kind of solution you get from 2A gun aficionados when a particularly horrible event crops up (the answer is always more guns). In this case, more financialisation.

zengineer 1y ago

I live in Switzerland since 10 years and I am always - not only amazed to read about how the Swiss gov / people tackle things, but experience it first hand in my daily life. Above all the train system is very interesting. From the smooth timetables to even the smallest details (E.g the acronyms sound or music notes in trains is based on the railway abbreviations SBB / CFF / FFE). I even made a post about it when creating a "Swiss train world": https://medium.com/@franzeus/building-an-interactive-coloring-world-with-swiss-trains-and-my-4-year-old-nephew-67d6e45381d7 https://medium.com/@franzeus/building-an-interactive-colorin...

sschueller 1y ago
Also all the data is open: https://opentransportdata.swiss/ https://opentransportdata.swiss/ and is continually being expanded with more data. So you can build things like I did: https://www.stationdisplay.com/ https://www.stationdisplay.com/ Recently also all the Swiss Weather data has been opened and you can create anything you want with it (no commercial restrictions)

zabzonk 1y ago

But of course the British did create one of the greatest transport projects - the country-wide railway system, only to have it destroyed by the Conservatives. I used to live in North London, and it made me so sad that each branch-line I walked over on bridge, now allotments, or simply overgrown, could have taken me int the City far faster and more efficiently than the tube (I like the tube, as much as anyone can). The UK can build things, but not if politicians are directly in charge, as they were in the Beeching cuts.

ta1243 1y ago
The majority of railway miles closed under Labour And your branch line wouldn't take you into the city - there isn't the terminal capacity. However new lines, like the Victoria, Jubilee, and Crossrail will.

moomin 1y ago

IIRC the principal cost overrun was a huge push to put nearly everything in tunnels in safe conservative consistencies. No project, good or bad, can survive that level of political interference.

raverbashing 1y ago
Yea NIMBYs (including "what about nature" or "what about bats" and "what about the scenery) are a huge waste of money and oxygen

linuxftw 1y ago

> Well, first up, they'd have spotted that our major cities need more frequent and faster rail connections from suburbs to centres and that these are prevented at the moment by insufficient platform capacity in stations like Leeds, Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street. So we need more station capacity in our city centres. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Build new cities, don't keep shuffling people into the existing ones. When you keep building new infrastructure to shuffle people into the same cities, the property values at the tail end of the infrastructure rise, pushing people further out, increasing the demand for new infrastructure. The property prices inside the city stay inflated, wages stagnate, the working class loses.

decimalenough 1y ago
The UK does not need more cities. In fact, like most of the industrialized world, their second-tier and third-tier cities are suffering since the entire economy and population are both getting inexorably pulled into London. This includes the planned cities ("new towns") that tried and largely failed to do exactly what you suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_in_the_United_Kingdo...
- linuxftw 1y ago
  It's an easy problem to solve if you want to use government levers: Raise the minimum wage inside London. Keep raising it until businesses start moving to other cities.
  - Etheryte 1y ago
    This is a considerably worse solution with unknown knock-on effects, especially when compared to a well understood solution of making a few stations handle more capacity.
    - linuxftw 1y ago
      It's always just a few stations. Driving up the property values of the landlords in the cities. It's a never ending cycle.

yanis_t 1y ago

Somehow following the rabbit hole led me to this list of infra megaprojects around the world [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects

alexey-salmin 1y ago
> "megaprojects, which may be defined as projects that cost more than US$1 billion" At our current pace a public toilet will soon qualify as a megaproject.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  In Europe, a defense megaproject.

inglor_cz 1y ago

I wonder how much of this difference is attributable to Swiss direct democracy, which teaches people to participate in the decision-making process, but it also teaches them that losing in a vote is natural, and that you in fact should have at least some position towards bigger projects, instead of ignoring 99 per cent of what is going on, because your position actually matters when the ballot is being counted. NIMBYs and other special interest groups are usually non-majority, but used to getting their way over the wish (or, more often, tired indifference) of the majority, which the Swiss system makes a bit harder.

dgb23 1y ago
There's some truth in what you say, but unfortunately there are also NIMBY regulations in place that delay/prevent infrastructure projects. I would prefer if our direct votes would shield _better_ against those mechanisms. However, I think the bigger cultural norm at play here is that public infrastructure is very cherished. We publicly own (at least 51% of each of) our energy companies, public transport system, telecommunications system etc. Long term planning and investment is also ingrained into our culture.

ajd555 1y ago

Great read, I didn't know about the Swiss approach to infrastructure projects, but I like it. In a sense, it's how successful networks are built: slowly, but steadily. I'm reminded of the Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen, where he states that starting at a smaller scale, you'll get a small network with more engagement that you can sustainably grow over time, whereas large companies that roll out a networked project in a big bang (Google+, anyone?) can dramatically fail. Very insightful and I look forward to applying this in NYC logistics!

ipaddr 1y ago

"They pick a year in the future - 2045, say - and ask: what should the national train timetable look like then, if we want to meet our national objectives as a country" The agile way. You end up getting nothing you really wanted done but everything is on time vs the method where you get everything you want at some unknown point in time. What if it was done waterfall style where you put in as much in the time frame and released at random marketing moments.

andsoitis 1y ago

> They pick a year in the future - 2045, say - and ask: what should the national train timetable look like then, if we want to meet our national objectives as a country? They work out what a good timetable looks like in that future. Then they build backwards from there. A workback plan!

Stevvo 1y ago

Switzerland's public transport is nearly perfect; it can take you anywhere, fast, in some of the most hostile inhabited terrain on the planet. However, a lot of people still drive because for many journies it's cheaper. I don't know if the UK can afford such great infrastructure investment.

tonfa 1y ago
> Switzerland's public transport is nearly perfect; it can take you anywhere, fast While I love swiss public transport, I wouldn't qualify it as fast. It's dense/frequent/reliable, but not so fast. If the core lines (e.g. St Gallen-Geneva and Basel-Lugano) where running >200km/h that would be fast. One reason is that making those fast has a much bigger benefit for cross border travel (non swiss), while a lot of the investments are done to benefit e.g. commuters, but with the enshrined road Gotthard traffic limitation I think we'll need to make Alp crossing more attractive for cross border travels at some point (and hopefully do the same for the mittelland line, zurich to geneva in sub-2h should definitely be possible)

steve1977 1y ago

Being Swiss, there's a lot of things I think we could do better. Public transport is not one of them though, I really have to say we got this nailed down pretty well. Even when it doesn't work, it still often works better than in neighboring countries ;)

sschueller 1y ago
There is always room for improvement. If you don't stay on top of things you end up with what Germany has now for public transport infrastructure.
jeffrallen 1y ago
Or like in Vaud and Geneva, if it doesn't work it's because we love it to death, completely overwhelming the limited capacity available with hordes of rush-hour commuters.
qcnguy 1y ago
But we must admit that Switzerland does not actually have high speed rail at all. So asking how it would build High Speed 2 is a bit of a misleading question. Swiss rail runs on time but slowly, this suits the Swiss culture which is much less centralized around big megacities than the UK so there's less need to do long commutes at high speed. The article does agree that Switzerland wouldn't have built HS2 to begin with, and the point about continuous development over occasional megaprojects is a good one. But it goes off the rails when it starts saying like "They'd have identified core intercity links that are far too slow: typically not to/from London, but some of the second-tier city connections that are extraordinarily slow:" The UK doesn't need these things. What it needs is much more capacity in and out of the center of London. That's where people actually need to go and go fast. The author seems to think that British transport planners are inexplicably stupid but the depressing reality of British transport is that it's dominated by the problem of moving people in and out of the center of London at peak times. Economically nothing else generates a return on investment and there's nothing the planners can do about that. Swiss planners would reach the same conclusion. Given that there's already a lot of physical rail going in and out, and there's no good way to add more or expand stations due to the insanely high value of the land around them, that means increasing speeds on existing lines or massive tunnelling projects. Hence, Crossrail and High Speed Rail 2. Switzerland has a unique solution to this problem of people wanting to work in city centers. It just ignores it! Zurich is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, and sometimes literally the most expensive, whilst also having a big living space problem. It got that way because the Swiss refuse to do any of the following: - Increase urban density. - Make trains fast. - Build more parking. - Allow a free housing market so workers can move in. (Zurich is run by socialists who buy up tons of housing to stop "rich" people from renting it, which then makes what little remains even more expensive for everyone else). This strategy kills the cities and makes life worse for the people who actually generate the economic value, who find their high salaries barely stretch to even a student-sized apartment and for whom an 11km commute takes 30 minutes.

octo888 1y ago

> They pick a year in the future - 2045, say - and ask: what should the national train timetable look like then, if we want to meet our national objectives as a country? I love this. In the UK we're currently in the middle of a ~25-30 year rail upgrade programme and if you ask what the new timetables will look like (i.e. tangible benefits), they look at you as if you had 3 heads. They're too busy blowing their own trumpet any time they complete a minor piece of work to answer such nonsense questions.

carlcoryell 1y ago

The difference in this article rhymes strongly with the difference between project and product mindsets in software development.

fmajid 1y ago

Switzerland is a very rich country. But UK infrastructure construction is significantly more expensive than its European peers like France, which is just as budget-constrained as the UK is.